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Faced with a debate in the literature on control vs. creativity, we focus on the use or rejection of management control tools and practices to steer creative activities within innovation processes. With a quantitative study of 169 French companies, we set out to explore the formal management control tools and informal management practices used by these organizations as part of their innovation processes. The results show that organizations need formal tools but also informal practices. While the tools and practices differ as the innovation process progresses, they are similar across organizations and types of innovation.